As people note every year, Colorado does not have groundhogs, and is forced to rely on Flatiron Freddy, a yellow-bellied marmot who lives in Boulder.

OK, not LIVES actually. Freddy is stuffed. He was hit by a car many years ago and each year he makes (by necessity) a mechanical appearance. One year he drove up in a remote-controlled car and one year he popped up via strings. Last year, rangers hinted he might use a zip line but, alas, so far that hasn’t happened.

It is unclear whether Freddy even did any forecasting while alive. It is possible that the fact he was road kill actually helped him get the job. Although I found one clip that said he was “formerly a marmot“, I firmly believe that once a marmot, always a marmot.

This year, Freddy saw his shadow — or would have if he was alive. This is the second year in a row he has given the opposite prediction from Punxsutawny Phil, his more famous Pennsylvania cousin. Last year, there were shadows back East but not here. (It is more than a thousand miles away, after all.)

Others groundhogs competing for the spotlight include Sir Walter Wally in North Carolina and Gen. Beauregard Lee in Georgia. Most of them are alive, but Ridge Lea Larry, in upstate New York, is also stuffed, and the “groundhog” in Silver Point, Tenn., is a person in a rodent costume on a motorcycle.

Just to remind you, seeing the shadow means six more weeks of winter and no shadow means an early spring. Groundhog day is actually Candlemas, as mentioned in one old poem ….

If Candlemas be fair and bright,
Winter has another flight.
If Candlemas brings clouds and rain,
Winter will not come again.

The Germans call it Grundsaudaag and substituted groundhogs for hedgehogs after immigrating to America, according to some versions (or instead of badgers … or even bears … in others.)

P.S.: I found two mentions of Stormy Marmot on the web, who is based in Aurora — but both mentions were by Phil-loyalists who only mentioned him to put him down. I don’t know if he made an appearance this year.

UPDATE I received a email from Stormy the Marmot, who said he is attempting to find out why Wikipedia did not include his prediction this year. Stormy provided a link to his forecast (which calls for six more weeks of winter.)

AND ONE MORE UPDATE: Sorry to see that updated Daily Camera story reports that Freddy is “beginning to fall apart” having being chewed on by mice (his evil cousins) while in storage. Hang in there, Freddy.

[Denver Post/John Epperson] A landscaper tends a young at the Superior Marketplace near U.S. 36 and Marshall Road.

Maybe it’s the grand I’ve spent on dead and broken trees over the past year, but here’s another lecture about weather and our wooded, expensive friends. We’ve weathered a year of drought. Last winter’s snowpack of weak, and we’re off to a grim start so far this season. As of last week, all of Colorado was in some stage of drought, and much of the state is weathering “extreme” or “exceptional” conditions, says the U.S. Drought Monitor.

So cut your the quiet giants of your yard some slack, or they could get even with a branch through the roof on a windy day.

The Colorado State Forest Service at Colorado State University said Monday to give your dormant trees some love, especially the younger ones, this winter.

“It’s very important to prepare your trees for winter’s cold, arid conditions, and also to continue watering them during drier periods over the next several months,” Keith Wood, community forestry program manager for the Colorado State Forest Service, said in a press release.

In the city, that means breaking out the buckets and or a hose every two to three weeks if there hasn’t been a good covering of show. Wood advised watering on days when the temperature gets to at least 40 degrees.

Can a city as young as Denver have folk legends and traditions? If so, one of them is that Halloween is likely to bring the first real snow of the season. Obviously, it can’t do that in 2012. We have had two measurable snowfalls already. Nonetheless, generations of Colorado trick-or-treaters have grown up looking to the skies — and not just for alien invaders.

According to the National Weather Service, snow has fallen on Oct. 31st 10 times since 1954 (including trace amounts.) However, there were 10 additional times when there was snow on the ground, even though nothing new fell. So, overall, snow is far from rare — but not what you would call common. (There were 12 other times where it snowed on Nov. 1st, so there was definitely some chill in the air for trick-or-treaters.) Plus there were obviously some chill or drizzly hauntings.

The extended forecast as of Saturday is warm and dry. TV predictions range from highs of 72 degrees on 9News and News4 to 64 degrees on Fox 31. Forecast lows range from 42 to 37. The average high for the date is 60 degrees and the average low is 31. No precipitation is expected.

The heaviest Halloween snow was recorded in 1972 (8 inches!) and the most recent snow was in 2004, when 1.4 inches fell. So it has been awhile, actually.

[Joey Bunch\The Denver Post]
Trees were golden in Denver this weekend, as perfect autumn weather set the state for Colorado Winter Weather Awareness Week

Weather worriers couldn’t have teed it up more perfectly for Colorado Winter Weather Awareness Week. The annual week of information and preparedness began Sunday with perfect fall weather, near the peak of the leaf-change across much of the state. By the end of the week, some Coloradoans could be slipping and sliding in sub-freezing temperatures.

Gov. John Hickenlooper’s signed a proclamation last month declaring the week-long observance and noted Colorado leads the nation in avalanche deaths. The governor said slides had “claimed the lives of hundreds of individuals in the past several decades” — 241 since 1950, to be exact, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center in Boulder. Last year high country experts said the avalanche risk was the highest in 30 years.

A few months ago I wagged my finger at the computer screen and told readers not to make too much out of one hot summer when it comes to global warming. It’s harder to make the same case for 12 consecutive Septembers without snow in Denver, even though our higher-elevation cousins to the west already have rejoiced in a few snow showers, and the annual high country road closures are just around the corner.

[Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post] New snow on Mount Evans prompted the closure of Colorado 5 on Sept. 26.

A 12th year without early snow is the most striking point in the National Weather Service’s summary of a topsy-turvy September of 2012. Think about that a minute. The last time it snowed in early autumn, Clinton was in the White House, Brian Griese made the Pro Bowl (look it up), and Sisqo was singing “The Thong Song.”

But before we let this no-snow trend spike the ball for climate change, keep in mind this long stretch of snowless Septembers in the city has been done before — from 1914 to 1926, when Jelly Roll Morton told us to do the “Black Bottom Stomp.”

Photo courtesy of Image Science and Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center
Airglow, starlight, aurora, city lights, and moonlight illuminate the nighttime skies, as seen from the International Space Station. Airglow in the upper atmosphere (appearing in this photo as a thin rim of light along the horizon) and starlight provide the ability to see clouds from space on moonless nights from the Suomi NPP satellite mission.

Weather researchers and forecasters will no longer be in the dark — ahem — on moonless nights, according to groundbreaking work at Colorado State University. Researchers there have found that starlight and the glow of upper atmosphere can emit a faint light that shines on clouds — enough light for an advanced weather-and-climate monitoring satellite provided by NASA and NOAA, orbiting about 512 miles above the Earth, according to CSU.

“This development is exciting and impressive,” Mary Kicza, assistant administrator for NOAA’s Satellite and Information Service, said in a statement released by CSU. “This could be especially useful to our meteorologists in areas like Alaska, where the winter months have long periods of darkness.”

Miller explains the big stride.

“Most weather satellites aren’t even sensitive enough to see the lights from a large city like Denver, much less the reflected moonlight, which is nearly a million times fainter than sunlight. These air glow/starlight sources are 100 to 1,000 times fainter still,” he stated. “Instead of using visible light, nighttime observations are typically relegated to infrared (heat) measurements, where near-surface features (such as fog) can blend into their surroundings because they have nearly the same temperature.”

He added, “In some ways, the day just got twice as long, and that’s pretty exciting for scientists.”

Last November Kristen Painter, my colleague at the paper, stood over my shoulder and taught me to use Twitter. Took about 10 minutes, and that was that. (Shameless plug: Follow me on Twitter for “Colorado Footnote” each work day at 12:45 p.m., a lunchtime serving of history, trivia, stuff I bet you didn’t know about our state. It doesn’t cost a thing.)

Meanwhile, the federal government is sinking a cool quarter-million bucks into finding out how weather wonks can get on Twitter and tell people about the weather, as well as how forecasters can collect news and information from tweets. That’s it.

So much for so little raises questions. To begin with, it’s a two-year study on a six-year-old technology with constraints beyond its 140-character limit. There’s plenty to cast doubt about the popularity of the platform in two or three years. We thought Myspace would never fade, and then it did. It used to be you were nobody if you didn’t talk Netflix at the cocktail party. Now you’re nobody if you do. Moreover, Twitter is a company valued at $8 billion that made less than $300 million last year, and given Facebook’s falling value in the public marketplace, you better bet ad intrusion is coming to your digital neighborhood, and then the cool kids will move out.

It’s a long way off, but it is possible that the Republicans could have an uninvited guest at their national convention next week in Florida — Hurricane Isaac.

Isaac was upgraded to a tropical storm on Tuesday and at 8 p.m. EDT it had 40 mph winds and was about 435 miles east of Guadeloupe and was moving at 17 mph. Forecasters do expect it to become a hurricane and some models have it hitting west Florida. USA Today said experts put the early chance of a hit on Tampa, where the GOP is gathering Monday through Thursday, at around 3 percent. The storm is being tracked by the National Hurricane Center.

The Republican Party and Tampa officials said they have long had contingency plans, since this is hurricane season, after all.

Florida hasn’t been hit by a major hurricane since Wilma in 2005 and there hasn’t been a direct hit on Tampa in 90 years. The city got a scare from Hurricane Charley in 2004, but it ended up hitting 100 miles to the south.

Add another victim to the casualties of the drought: backyard tomatoes. These are usually the salad days, the happy time of year we should be swimming in the red fruit, delighting our neighbors with gifts on their doorsteps, making sandwiches with slices as thick as a T-bone.

But not this blue-blazing summer.

Tomatoes get fat and happy on warm days between 75 and 85 degrees and nights around 60 in the high desert. This diurnal pendulum gives tomatoes and melons their rich, sweet flavor. There’s no replacing the sun’s touch, which is why store-bought, grow-light tomatoes taste like damp Styrofoam to my homegrown-cultured palate.

If you’re one of those analytic people who believe the future will be pretty much like the past, then breathe a sigh of relief if you’ve had enough of 2012’s infernal heat.

The past 30 years of weather averages tells us that high temperatures peaked on Aug. 1, when the normal daily high since 1982 is 90 degrees. The mercury curves slowly downward in August to a daily high of 84 degrees in Denver by Labor Day. And, of course, September is, as my favorite Alabamian would say, like a box of chocolates (you never know what you’re going to get). After all, in 1961 snow fell on Denver on Sept. 3, and the city shivered through its first freeze on Sept. 18 in 2006 and on Sept. 14 in 2003.

Forecast Colorado is your place for the latest breaking weather news for Denver and Colorado, featuring the latest forecasts, road conditions and closures — with an occasional detour into meterological science, trivia and oddities.